Tesla’s AutoPilot mixed signals forced Mobileye to bolt
Tesla’s AutoPilot mixed signals forced Mobileye to bolt
A few weeks after the first self-driving fatality, in a Tesla Model S, Mobileye decided to sever ties with the electric car company.
Tesla quickly piled on the story to make sure it had the narrative, the company said Mobileye couldn’t keep pace with updates and Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, said “parting ways was inevitable.”
See Also: Mobileye and Delphi aim for autonomous tech by 2019
Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua doesn’t refute this, but in a new report from Reuters, he tries to give his company’s side of the story.
“[AutoPilot] is not designed to cover all possible crash situations in a safe manner,” said Shashua. “No matter how you spin it, it is not designed for that. It is a driver assistance system and not a driverless system.”
Shashua took issue with Tesla’s marketing of the AutoPilot system, and the way Musk and other executives would tout the system’s sophistication while also warning drivers not to take their hands off the wheel.
“Long term this is going to hurt the interests of [Mobileye] and hurt the interests of an entire industry, if a company of our reputation will continue to be associated with this type of pushing the envelope in terms of safety,” Shashua said.
Tesla adding more warnings to get your attention
Tesla has started to add more safety warnings to the AutoPilot system, to avoid drivers taking hands off for extended periods of time. The latest update, AutoPilot 8.0, also adds far more data points through a new radar system and syncs all Tesla Model S and Model X cars to understand the roads better and avoid another fatal accident.
See Also: Tesla fatality can’t dissuade NHTSA from self-driving upside
Elon Musk and Tesla spokespeople have adamantly defended AutoPilot, stating that the system managed 130 million miles of driving before a crash, far higher than the average 60 million miles per crash caused by human drivers. That data might be a little misleading, considering another crash from January 2016 has been revealed in China earlier this week.
It might need to prepare more defenses as the National Highway Traffic & Safety Administration looks into the Tesla crash and launches new regulations on self-driving cars.
The post Tesla’s AutoPilot mixed signals forced Mobileye to bolt appeared first on ReadWrite.
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